Stover-Ryan Framework
Definition
The 2002 ethical framework for war-zone forensic anthropology, addressing the four tensions specific to conflict-context casework: investigative pace versus survivor needs; scientific independence versus funder pressure; evidence retention versus family rights; and team safety.
- Published
- 2002
- Domain
- War-zone forensic anthropology ethics
- Core tensions
- Four named conflict-context tensions
- One tension
- Investigative pace versus survivor needs
Common questions
What are the four tensions the framework names?+
Investigative pace versus survivor needs, scientific independence versus funder pressure, evidence retention versus family rights, and team safety, each treated as a recurring conflict specific to war-crimes casework rather than domestic forensic work.
Does the framework apply to routine domestic exhumations?+
It was written for conflict-context mass grave work where funders, tribunals, and grieving communities compete for control of the process. Domestic medico-legal exhumations rarely face the same funder-independence or team-safety pressures, so its specific guidance transfers only partially.
Related terms
- Desaparecidos
- The approximately 30,000 people abducted, tortured, and killed by Argentina's military junta between 1976 and 1983, whose fates were denied by the...
- EAAF (Equipo Argentino De Antropologia Forense)
- The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, founded in Buenos Aires in 1984 by Clyde Snow and a group of Argentine student scientists including...
- ECCC (Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia)
- The hybrid tribunal established in 2006 jointly by Cambodia and the UN to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes committed between...
- ICMP (International Commission on Missing Persons)
- The international organisation that has led DNA-based identification of missing persons from the former Yugoslavia since 1996, working from a laboratory in...
- ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda)
- The United Nations ad hoc tribunal established in November 1994 to prosecute the organisers of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Operated from Arusha,...
- ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia)
- The United Nations ad hoc tribunal established in 1993 to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in the former...
- Perimortem Trauma
- Skeletal damage inflicted at or around the time of death, when the bone still retains its elastic properties. Distinguished from postmortem (after-death)...
- Primary and Secondary Graves
- In the Srebrenica context: primary graves are the original burial sites of executed victims. Secondary and tertiary graves are locations to which...